Competing Claims
Further information: Early flying machinesFirst flight claims are made for Ader, Whitehead, Pearse, and Jatho for their variously documented tests in years prior to and including 1903. Claims that the first true flight occurred after 1903 are made for Vuia and Santos-Dumont. Supporters of these pre- and post-Wright pioneers argue that techniques used by the Wright brothers disqualify them as first to make successful airplane flights. Those techniques were: a launch rail; skids instead of wheels; a headwind at takeoff; and a catapult after 1903. Supporters of the Wright brothers argue that proven, repeated, controlled, and sustained flights by the brothers entitle them to credit as inventors of the airplane, regardless of those techniques.
Read more about this topic: Wright Brothers
Famous quotes containing the words competing and/or claims:
“The first wrote, Wine is the strongest. The second wrote, The king is strongest. The third wrote, Women are strongest: but above all things Truth beareth away the victory.”
—Apocrypha. 1 Esdras, 3:10-12.
Referring to “three young men” of the bodyguard of Darius, king of the Persians, competing for his favor.
“Though an unpleasant sort of person, and even a queer threatener withal, yet, if one meets him, one must get along with him as one can; for his ignorance is extreme. And what under heaven indeed should such a phantasm as Death know, for all that the Appearance tacitly claims to be somebody that knows much?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)